Visual Studio 2005 Team Edition for Testers runs tests in a different folder than the folder that holds the built assemblies. When a test is run, the test and code-under-test assemblies, and the deployment items are placed in a test deployment folder unique to that test run. This attribute identifies files and directories that contain files that are used by the deployed test to run. The test engine makes a copy of the deployment items and places them in test deployment directory based upon the OutputDirectory specified or the default directory. See Test Deployment for additional information.

This attribute can be specified on a test class. There can be multiple instances of this attribute to specify more than one item. The item path can be absolute or relative. Relative paths are relative to the RelativePathRoot setting found in the .testrunconfig file.

The following examples demonstrate different usage of the DeploymentItemAttribute:

[DeploymentItem("file1.xml")] Deploys an item named file1.xml located at the RelativeRootPath. The file is deployed to the deployment root directory.

[DeploymentItem("file2.xml", "DataFiles")] Deploys an item named file2.xml located at the RelativeRootPath. The file is deployed to the DataFiles subdirectory of the deployment root directory.

[DeploymentItem("C:\\MyDataFiles\\")] Deploys all items and directories found within the MyDataFiles directory. This does not create the MyDataFiles directory underneath the deployment directory. All files and directories within MyDataFiles will be deployed to the deployment root directory. To copy the entire MyDataFiles directory structure, you must specify MyDataFiles as an output directory.